society, similar in spirit to, and not unworthy of the genius of that paragon of all rogues, ❝ his Moorship's Ancient." The crime of plucking out Gloster's eyes, Shakspeare transfers from Edmund to the Duke of Cornwall. Edgar is Shakspeare's representative of Leonatus, the good son of the king of Paphlagonia, and the distinctions between them are, that Leonatus secured himself from the persecutions of his father, and the malice of his brother, by entering as a private soldier in the service of a neighbouring power, where his courage and conduct quickly brought him into notice; and, on the point of advancement, he relinquished every thing to succour his afflicted father. Edgar saves his own life by concealing himself under the disguise of a maniac. For the delineation of the madness of Lear, the poet drew on the resources of his own genius alone; and from his deep knowledge of human nature, he traced a mind and heart like Lear's through all the wanderings of insanity; and no picture of this lamentable degradation of humanity was ever more pathetic, delicate, or true. Edgar's madness is assumed, and the course pursued by the poet sufficiently indicates how sensibly he felt the difference of the task before him. He was relieved from the labour of that reflection which was necessary to the development of the intricate windings of the heart, and the exhibition of mental aberration, in harmony with the natural character and disposition of the "sound man;" for the part of Edgar required nothing more than a judicious proportion of such extravagant and unconnected ideas as would support the character of a wandering lunatic. Shakspeare, therefore, gave himself little more trouble than what reference occasioned him to Harsnet's "Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures to withdraw Her Majesty's Subjects from their Allegiance;" a work written to expose the craft of the Jesuits, whose pretended cures of feigned demoniacs were used as a means for the seduction of converts to the Catholic religion. It was from this work that he extracted the names of all the fiends and devils with which Edgar displays such extreme familiarity. "Frateretto, Hopdance, Obdicut, prince of lust; Hobbididance, of dumbness; Mahu, of stealth; Modo, of murder; and Flibbertigibbet, of mopping and mowing; who since possesses chambermaids and waiting-women,” are all exhibited in turn by the lynx-eyed bishop, from whom Shakspeare also borrowed, for the use of Edgar, many casual phrases, which, being inex pressive of valuable ideas, are devoid of sufficient interest to justify their individual quotation. Edgar loses nothing in the comparison of heroism with the Paphlagonian prince. Like him he exposes his life in defence of his father, like him he is victorious; and his impeachment, challenge, and punishment of the villanous Edmund, are in the highest strain of chivalric gallantry. When Edgar throws aside his disguise, and proclaims himself the son of Gloster, he shortly recounts the way in which he passed the days of his adversity; all which the audience were as well acquainted with as himself, for his actions had all been exhibited before them. But Shakspeare found the story twice narrated in the Arcadia, and he was seduced, on this occasion, to the commission of tautology, as he had been by the poem of Arthur Brooke, when he wrote Romeo and Juliet. A contrast of the plot and characters of Shakspeare's tragedy with the materials used in its construction, has nearly exhausted our means of further illustration, and of the little that remains to be said the importance is but trifling. Johnson censures Shakspeare for making Lear too much a mythologist, in swearing by Apollo and Jupiter. To obviate the objection, Malone quotes Geoffrey of Monmouth, Holinshed, and The Mirrour of Magistrates, for the fact that "Bladud, Lear's father, attempting to fly, fell on the temple of Apollo and was killed;" on which Steevens sarcastically asks, whether we are to understand from this circumstance, that the son swears by Apollo, because the father broke his neck on the temple of that deity? Shakspeare, indeed, learnt from Bladud's accident that Apollo was worshipped by our British ancestors; but it is doubted, whether reference would not have been more pertinent to the old play, which most probably put Apollo, and Jupiter too, into Shakspeare's head: "This will please him more Than e'er Apollo's music pleased Jove." The use made by Shakspeare of ideas that he met with in his reading, is sometimes extremely unexpected and singular. In the old play he found "I am as kind as is the pelican, That kills itself to save her young ones lives." The obvious image of Lear sacrificing himself for the benefit of his children made, apparently, little impression on Shakspeare, and his mind passed on to the more remote idea of Lear's children, like the young of the pelican, glutting themselves on their parent's blood, and, accordingly, Lear is made to exclaim "Is it the fashion that discarded fathers Its obviousness would make it superfluous to observe, that the history of the Paphlagonian king furnished the incident which gave occasion for Edgar's magnificent description of Dover cliff, were it not necessary to remark, that he did not thence derive the incongruous idea of persuading Gloster that he had actually fallen from the stupendous height, though he was perfectly unhurt, and only fell the length of his own body. Respecting the management of the story of Lear, the most striking circumstance is its connection with the history of the king of Paphlagonia and his sons. Never were the materials of an episode more harmonious with the main incident, and never was an episode more ingeniously interwoven and finally amalgamated with the subject matter than the fable of Gloster with the tale of Lear. Indeed, from the arrival of Albany and Regan at Gloster's castle it is |
